freedom.com

This is my first attempt to publish an article in English on the „Scorpio for Weekend” blog. I hope you will enjoy it.

When I was scrolling my facebook wall I saw the picture above. It’s an obvious irony and sarcasm posted by somebody whose attitude towards the anarchocapitalists is at best unwilling.

However, this picture, if analysed as if it had not been sarcastic, almost gets the point. The totalitarian governmental statement „Obey us or die!” is no longer totalitarian when it becomes a commercial statement.

Let’s focus on the most scary part: „or die!”. This is an obvious threat but what is the source of it?

With the government, the answer is obvious. You live your life, you disobey what the government said must be obeyed under the death penalty, several sad men in black suits come, and you’re eventually gone.

With the commerce, the answer is obvious too. You live your life, it has some requirements (like eating), you disobey what the commerce said must be obeyed if you wish the commerce to provide you with some food, and you’re eventually dead of starvation.

The difference between the two situations may be a very subtle one to observe but is actually crucial. In the second situation you die and even if you had obeyed the government and the commerce had never existed without any replacement you would die as well. You would not disobey anyone but you would not be equipped with food as well for the simple reason that there would be nobody to equip you with some. In the first situation, on the other way, obeying the commerce would be just enough to live, had the government never existed without any replacement.

The government is totalitarian and anti-freedom because it forces you to obey it and actively punishes you if you don’t. The commerce is libertarian because it offers you obeying it, and if you don’t, the biggest threat is that once your life is in danger it will passively observe it rather than helping you. If you have a particular situation without either the government or the commerce, the commerce, when it appears, never makes your situation worse because it always leaves you the opportunity of changing nothing in your life. The government does the opposite. Actually, it never leaves you the option to act as if it had never existed.

There seem to be some exceptions, like the mafias forcing tributes for protecting restaurants, shops, etc. But if you look deeper at the whole situation, the mafia by its nature is much more „.gov-like” than „.com-like”: it provides protecting services, it uses guns and violence, it says it has monopoly for their services in a particular area, it sets the service prices without the negotiation option, it forces you to buy the services, and it actively makes your situation worse than this situation used to be before it appeared if you don’t. Actually, the only „.com-like” and not „.gov-like” aspect of the mafia is that the mafia is effective, including the quality of the provided services. Once it protects a particular restaurant, the word „protection” does not have to be put inside the inverted commas because the owner may sleep well, feeling safe in case some bandits tried to destroy the restaurant. With the state police „protection” the inverted commas are a must and the safety feeling is a pipe dream.

A few paragraphs before I used the word „almost” because despite all the things I wrote above this picture actually misses one point. It is a good one but could be even better with a slightly different web address on it: instead of www.obeyusordie.gov (or .com) it should read www.***.gov/obeyusordie or www.***.obeyusordie.gov (or .com, instead of .gov, respectively). Of course, the asterisks do not represent the real, particular addresses. They are just placeholders to be filled with something.

Now there comes a surprise: what’s the spectrum of the possible „somethings”? With .gov, the spectrum is quite small and very restricted because one can’t register a .gov address just because he or she wants it. Therefore, the choice is rather none, compared to .com.

This would be a small difference because apparently the only thing that differs is a number and not a general rule. Even if it was true, it would still be an important difference. For example, I think that government is anti-freedom by its nature but I also think that the world would be an overall much freer place if there had been existing millions of countries governed by millions of governments which would be independent of each other. The whole totalitarian nature of the government would still apply but the ability of picking one totalitarism out of ten millions leaves you much more freedom than the ability of picking one totalitarism out of less than three hundred.

But the .com’s offer is even better than that. After all, there is a possibility that neither of ten million .govs’ offers matches you needs as well as neither of hundreds of millions .coms’ offers matches your needs. In this case, the advantage of .com is obvious: you may produce yet another one placeholder for the asterisks yourself, without asking anybody for permission, and start being obeyed instead of obeying others right now. Of course, „being obeyed” under the .com obeying rules which now do not seem so admirably, do they? But you can do this just because you want to, without any restrictions (and if you face any .com restrictions remember that even in this case the .gov is responsible for them).

Now try taking matters into your own hands with .gov. Fail. ¡No pasarán! Not enough freedom.

Since this article is in English, please comment it in English as well. The whole blog is in Polish and the description of the form fields is in Polish as well but as a reader of this blog you’re intelligent enough to solve this inconvenience.

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Jedna myśl nt. „freedom.com”

I appreciate your language skills. I have only one suggestion for you to consider.

Instead of „forcing tributes” I would use „intimidating” – it goes better in connection with „mafia” (which I would replace by „mob” as it is more general world for a criminal organization while „mafia” is more specific). The „forcing tributes” phrase fits better to such a situation where one state forces another to pay tribute in order to avoid armed forces’ attack. This phrase is used e.g. to describe the submission of Dubrovnik to the Venetian Republic.